Blog | Lindsey Graham jokes about white men and Southern Christians. Should we care?

Sometimes we get caught making jokes that reveal a bit more than we intended. Such is the plight of Lindsey Graham, South Carolina’s senior U.S. Senator, who was recorded making off-color jokes about himself, white men and people of faith.

According to a story in the Post and Courier:

“After using profanity to say the government is messed up, Graham tells the group: "If I get to be president, white men who are in male-only clubs are going to do great in my presidency."

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I can’t get myself worked up over this, even as I am still pulling for a miracle for Graham to lose Tuesday.

They were just silly jokes. The one about white males was a bit revealing, though. As others have pointed out, Graham’s votes and priorities in the U.S. Senate have improved the plight of white men in all-male clubs. But plenty of white men have been hurt by his policies, including those sacrificed for his seeming insatiable thirst for more war, as well as those left behind because Graham helped block a Medicaid expansion that would have helped plenty of poor white men in South Carolina, all because it was part of the Affordable Care Act, the dreaded “Obamacare.”

Here’s a more interesting question:

Had a Southern Democrat, or even a Northern one, joked about Christians and drinking and other such things, as Graham did, would there have been a great cry out among conservative Christians, claiming it was the latest example of religious persecution?